Discovery of bioactive secondary metabolites produced by microbial strains from isolated environments

Abstract

Actinobacteria are known to be prolific producers of bioactive secondary metabolites. Despite the great diversity of compounds isolated from actinobacteria, particularly from the Streptomyces genus, it has already been shown that the biosynthetic potential of these microorganisms is far from being completely explored. Considering the almost 43,000 isolated natural products of microorganisms, the isolation of only 69 unpublished secondary metabolites from endophytic actinobacteria indicates that this group of bacteria is totally underexploited and / or that the methodologies used to obtain these compounds do not have been effective. Fungi from the Antarctic continent also began to be isolated, identified and exploited from a biotechnological point of view only recently. Considering that microorganisms obtained from isolated environments may present a highly differentiated metabolic potential, this project aims to explore microorganisms from these environments, aiming at the discovery of bioactive natural products. Using UPLC-MS/MS for the dereplication of extracts, helping to prioritize the isolation of novel and biologically active substances, this project aims at to isolate and elucidate structurally unpublished and bioactive secondary metabolites produced by endophytic actinobacteria isolated from plants on the island of Alcatrazes, as well as by fungi from the Antarctic continent. (AU)